Entertainment
Only 3 Steven Spielberg Movies Are Kind of Bad
Steven Spielberg is about as legendary as filmmakers get, and that’s something that should be emphasized right away, before things get a little negative. He’s made a few dozen movies, as a director, across a career that’s lasted more than half a century, and he remains active, as of 2026, with the (currently) upcoming Disclosure Day being one of many blockbuster-scale movies he’s made. It would be great if that movie were great, of course, but it almost doesn’t matter, in the overall scheme of things, because Spielberg’s always going to be a legend because of what he’s already done. Some of the most beloved, enduring, and popular American movies of all time were directed by him (see Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park, for starters), and he’s also taken on a few films of a more serious nature that are remarkable, and not necessarily the kind of blockbuster fare that he’s most celebrated for, like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and Munich.
Again, there’s a lot by way of positive things that can be said about Steven Spielberg, and his misfires aren’t too common, when you consider how many movies he’s made and how long he’s been active for. The ones that aren’t great have to be emphasized here as “kind of bad,” rather than “really bad” or “terrible.” Spielberg’s worst movies are just a bit clunky, and maybe disappointing, but it would be a stretch to suggest those misfires are outright failures, or devoid of anything somewhat redeeming. The ones below just come the closest to being bad, and some of the picks might feel controversial. Similarly controversial is the admission that of the three movies here, the following are not among them: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Always, and 1941, all of them flawed, but not really close enough to be considered bad by this particular writer. The following movies (again, in this writer’s opinion) are worse than those ones, but not by much. Consider those more expected/usual suspects as having received dishonorable mentions, if you want.
3
‘War Horse’ (2011)
No false advertising here, at least, because War Horse is a war movie and there is also a horse in it. The movie begins as something about that horse and his owner, but then the horse is sold to the Cavalry while World War I is beginning, and so the pair are separated. And the horse gets involved in a whole bunch of battles or, more accurately, is used by various people throughout the conflict, and then the horse’s owner is all sad about it and wants the horse back. It’s in this weird zone, as a movie, because there are ingredients here that might suggest a slam-dunk, but then there’s also a kind of strange premise and some other glaring issues that really don’t suggest anything slam-dunk-y in nature. Like, War Horse is blown up to almost two and a half hours in length, for some reason, and there really isn’t a lot of story here… plus, the film is quite episodic in nature, so the stop-and-start feeling of it all, when paired with the epic-length runtime, makes it all feel like quite a slog to actually get through.
When compared to the other war movies Steven Spielberg has directed, War Horse falls pretty short. It’s maybe a little interesting for its supporting cast, because the way the film’s structured, it does lead to a good many characters showing up and dropping out along the way, and a few of those actors were either about to blow up – or were sort of blowing up – in the very early 2010s (namely, Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch, both of whom have supporting roles here). But there are those reasons why War Horse has been kind of forgotten, and it doesn’t boast one standout element that other debatably middling Spielberg films from this period have. Like, one year on from War Horse, Spielberg directed Lincoln, and that movie’s not perfect, and it also has that War Horse problem of being too long, but it does boast an incredible Daniel Day-Lewis performance at its center. War Horse is all a bit too forgettable, though, if one’s being generous, and maybe actually kind of bad, if one’s not being so generous. It’s a little bad, sadly.
2
‘The BFG’ (2016)
The BFG sees Steven Spielberg trying to do E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial again, but this time within the bounds of the fantasy genre, rather than the sci-fi one. And that might sound like a bit of a bold or even stupid claim, but The BFG does take that kind of approach to the source material, which was published the same year as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial came out. Okay, that’s probably just a coincidence. But The BFG (2016) was adapted by Melissa Mathison, and her best-known credit was for writing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, so with those two essentially re-teaming for The BFG… you can start to see it. Maybe it doesn’t seem like as big of a stretch to say now. Anyway, The BFG does fail in most of the areas where E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial succeeds, and it’s weird to see a family movie mishandled in this way when it’s got a somewhat comparable premise to that 1982 classic (child becomes friends with an unlikely/otherworldly companion) and had some of the same people involved in making it.
There are technically worse family movies out there, and you can recognize that an attempt was made, on a technical front, with The BFG, even if so much of the ambition feels misguided.
There’s just a horror to a lot of The BFG that does not feel intentional. The title character looks so awful throughout, and whatever worked with the computer animated characters in The Adventures of Tintin (2011) was not maintained here, with The BFG. Also, Mark Rylance is not very good, especially compared to the performance he gave in the previous year’s Bridge of Spies (Spielberg’s preceding movie), but he’s also got lesser material to work with here, so maybe not even Daniel Day-Lewis (if Spielberg had kept him around post-Lincoln) would’ve been able to do much here. There are technically worse family movies out there, and you can recognize that an attempt was made, on a technical front, with The BFG, even if so much of the ambition feels misguided, and that screenplay being so sloppy in the first place makes it harder to see much else here as worthy of being considered a silver lining or whatever. There’s just not much here, and it’s hard to imagine either young or older viewers getting anything substantial out of this one.
1
‘The Terminal’ (2004)
There was something of a dream team assembled for The Terminal, or at least it might look that way on paper. Steven Spielberg collaborating with Tom Hanks is usually a good thing, and they’d been on a solid streak in the years preceding The Terminal, thanks to Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Catch Me If You Can (2002). John Williams did the score, and maybe that’s not too surprising, but it’s still worth noting, because Spielberg and Williams are one hell of a duo. Michael Kahn was the editor, and he’s either edited or co-edited far more Spielberg feature films than he hasn’t… like, he’s technically collaborated with Spielberg on more movies than Williams has, only just. And then Janusz Kamiński was the cinematographer for The Terminal, and he’s fulfilled that role for about 20 Spielberg movies all up. Sure, those collaborations include the aforementioned War Horse and The BFG, but Kamiński’s contributions to Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and West Side Story are harder to overlook/ignore.
Overlooking and ignoring is just what you should do for The Terminal, though. There were all these great people who came together to make another Spielberg movie, and it ended up, somehow, becoming pretty much the worst Spielberg movie. It’s the one film of his that really goes over the line in terms of being overly sentimental, and it really drags, with the initially intriguing premise (about a man effectively stranded inside the John F. Kennedy Airport terminal) soon giving way to awkward humor, sickly sweet emotional beats, and an overall sense of tedium that doesn’t really feel intentional. Like, The Terminal isn’t trying to capture the boredom and tedium that would probably come from being stuck in this situation. It’s trying to be a crowd-pleaser, and it’s not very pleasing. There are so many other Spielberg movies that aim for entertainment value above anything else and really succeed. The Terminal has simply not aged very well, and feels like it should stay nice and forgotten about in the past. It tries too hard to make you feel good, and nothing feels very sincere or effortless about it, the way you likely feel about a great many actually moving and endearing Spielberg films.
The Terminal
- Release Date
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June 18, 2004
- Runtime
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128 Minutes
- Writers
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Andrew Niccol, Sacha Gervasi, Jeff Nathanson
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